I: Kabir Gokhale​

4th of April, 2024 CE
Lincoln Park, Chicago, IL, USA

​

The door’s closed, but it’s about to open. The door’s closed… but it’s about to open. My eyes are bloodshot, and the damn door is about to open, and I’m still holding the joint and this whole fucking room smells like weed and it would take half my rent in Febreze to mask it before this goddamn door fucking opens! Fuck!

But I can’t move. I’m stuck, wedged between the cushions of this couch. There’s a bowl of Doritos in one hand and a PlayStation controller in the other. The TV’s not even on; I just like how the controller feels in my hand. But… wait, I’m still holding the joint, so what’s going on? I close my eyes and focus. I feel the controller; I feel the bowl… but the joint is there too.

I open my eyes and look at my right hand. The joint and the bowl are occupying the same space, caught in some sort of spatial flux. I unflex my fingers and the two objects stay fixed, floating above my hand. Superpowers? I dunno, maybe. I skip multiple steps and start thinking about lair logistics and possible arch-nemeses.

Bang Bang! Two knocks at the door, which means someone finally remembered to lock it. Standing outside the window is my girlfriend Sahana, as expected. She’s got her hair up in a Trunchbull bun, paired with sweats and a Weezer hoodie. I hate Weezer.

I wanna open the door for her, I do. I just… can’t. My superpowers are finally developing and that has to be more important. As I ponder my gifts, I realize the Dorito bowl has been face down on my chest this whole time, the joint slowly burning away between my fingers. Shit. The telekinesis was a lie, and my lair remains this shitty apartment. Still, at least I have the comfort of the controller and its beautiful ergonomics.

Bang Bang! she knocks again. I sink further into the cushions, hoping the void below leads to a Wonderland far from here. Her head cranes towards the window as she peers into the room. I look away. If I can’t see her, she can’t see me… right?

“Open the fucking door, Kabir!”

Okay, she can see me.

“I’ll break the window if I have to!” she yells.

My sleep paralysis demon—Lord Gophe, Master of Rent and Sovereign of Leases—flashes me a dirty look from the ceiling, holding a red-marked damage repair bill in one of his eight gangrenous hands.

Starved of options, I turn my neck as far towards her as I can and give her my classic ‘divorced dad’ look. It’s a complicated balance of brow and lip movements that brings forth a specific sort of pity. It also usually works best when the target is unfamiliar with it. Sahana is very familiar with it.

“I swear to God, Kabir!”

My brain’s on fire now. A quarter of it is freaking out about any potential damage to the window. The second quarter is focused entirely on the smooth, dimpled faces of the controller. The third is mildly grieving the death of this relationship, and the fourth is finding all of this very funny.

That last quarter wins out, my lips curling up into a smirk as the humor reaches me. Sahana, of course, is not pleased. 

“You think this is funny, you piece of shit!?” she yells, banging on the window. As a big fan of myself and my work, I take immediate offense to the ‘piece of shit’ slander. I narrow my gaze at her through the blinds.

There’s fire in her eyes, emboldened by the natural kohl of her melanin. She’s snarling too, the rage encoded deep into the wrinkles of her nose. She hates me, fundamentally, and that realization kills the fourth quarter of my brain instantly. It also sobers me enough to return feeling to my limbs.

But before I have a chance to get up, a body flashes in front of me. The movement is stuttered, as if my eyes are rendering it in a lower framerate than the rest of the room. It crosses from the kitchenette to the door in a fraction of a second, opening it and going outside in one swift movement.

I hear muffles. Sahana’s still yelling, but someone is calming her down. After the back and forth, she shoots one last look before leaving. Then the door opens, revealing the face of my savior: Chunseong.

We called him Big C, back when he still rocked those XXL Target t-shirts, but he slimmed down to an L after a month-long winter stint with his family in Busan. I dunno what the hell kind of cardio program they put him on over there, but it’s definitely done him favors in the lady department. It’s also massively tempered his ‘big boy’ attitude.

“Lemme get you some water,” he says, running back into the kitchenette.

“What did you say to her?”

“The truth.” He grabs a long-expired Brita pitcher from the fridge. “You’re a good guy and a complete mess, one she needs a break from.”

“I am a good guy, aren’t I?”

Chunseong sighs, returning with the pitcher and a freshly scrubbed SOLO cup. “You can be a good guy. You… you have the capacity. Just not right now.” He sets the cup on a side table and fills it, then sits on the ottoman across from me. “Kabir, you’re on the cusp of what we call a baek-su.”

Oh, am I? Prick. “I watch the Korean dramas your mom sends me, bro. I’m not a fucking bum.”

“I said ‘cusp,’ Kabir, ‘cusp.’ We’ve got a couple months until graduation, and then you’ll turn full-on baek-su. Two months to find you a job, so your dad doesn’t completely cut you off. And I don’t care if you hate spending more than twenty minutes on LinkedIn. We’re getting you through this… isn’t that right!?”

Two faces poke out of their respective rooms down the hall. The first is Darcy’s, lathered in a nasty algae-green facial cream that’s tangling into her dirty blondes.

“You look like shit,” she says, fully aware of the irony, “but we still love you!” Her eyes continue, a slight squint that says “…even if you’re a huge disappointment.” I try and ignore that part.

Behind her, Maria gives me eyes that only communicate the disappointment. The shame stabs even worse, but I parry it away.

“Finish the pitcher, then take a shower,” Chunseong says, patting me on the head before getting up. “Band practice in thirty!”

“Yessir,” I reply, weakly reaching for the SOLO cup. My fingers barely wrap around the top edge, the added friction of Dorito dust allowing me to carry it over the chasm between the side table and the couch.

Then comes the shower, or a training exercise in post-apocalyptic resource rationing (courtesy of Lord Gophe’s excessive water bill markup). With a groan, I lift myself off the couch and take my walk of shame to the communal four-person bathroom from hell. Behind me, the controller weeps electric tears as it waves goodbye.

“And a one, and a two, and a one, two, three, four!” Darcy’s laying down a classic four-on-the-floor while her sticks get all syncopate-y on the snare. She’s got on her favorite oversized t-shirt, emblazoned with the excessively metal logo of her dad’s old band, SugarBabylon. Her hair’s tied up in a loose bun, loose enough that when she goes crazy for the chorus, it’ll come undone in spectacular hair-metal fashion.

Maria’s locked in too, scanning the lyrics of our song ‘Get Up, Get Out’ on her phone. She’s sporting a full ‘dark academia’ get-up; the classic black turtleneck and plaid slacks combo. The brunette bird’s nest and bandana on her head seem a little out of place, but it’s probably intentional, given her artsy tendencies.

Chunseong is arpeggiating a I-♭VII-♭VI-iv progression in E on his shitty guitar. He’s wearing… Uniqlo probably? A baby blue button-up that’s paired exceptionally with the same jet-black perm I’ve seen on every Korean celebrity.

Then there’s me, the band’s unappreciated bass player, breaking the hardest sweat while I wear out my right arm with a constant drone of lightning-fast sixteenth notes. I told them I could get weird with the bassline, but they prefer the standard slog of straight sixteenths. Assholes.

Still, it does sound pretty epic. Darcy’s building the rhythm now, while Maria winds through the pre-chorus. She’s got that smoky Rekha Bhardwaj voice, like rubbing a soapy loofah on your skin after a long day (and that’s coming from someone who just jammed out to Bollywood music in the shower).

 “Kabir, shift the last As in the chorus up to Bs! I wanna try something!”

“Got it,” I yell back, nodding at Chunseong as the build-up reaches a fever pitch. Darcy’s bun is nearly undone, blonde wisps flapping wildly as the sound of the snare fills every corner of the garage.

That’s right, we’re a garage band, playing out of Chi-Town’s greatest neighborhood: Lincoln Park. We’ve got that premium downtown proximity, and the quiet streets covered in those gorgeous Chicago-style oak and elm canopies. Sure, Lord Gophe keeps the rent a little high, but we make it work. The neighbors do get pissy though, so we’ve started patching the garage walls with those foam sound-muffling pads. And a good thing too, cause when we get loud, we get fucking loud.

“Go!” Darcy shouts as we crash into the pre-chorus. Chunseong and I lean in, while Maria pushes her rasp as hard as she can. Tom fill, power chord, bass lick, power chord, like a Woodstock-themed pinball machine. Maria’s lyrics are also finally hitting just right, after weeks spent tweaking the details.

EMaj “Think my boss might be the Devil playing Reaganite!

DMaj (Get up, get out, fuck up, get back inside…) [whispered] [boys do ()s]

CMaj C-suite hell-spawn, motherfucking parasite!

AMin (Get up, get out, fuck up, get back inside…)”

EMaj Think he ate the last girl who worked here!

DMaj (Get up, get out, fuck up, get back inside…)

CMaj Keeps her head though, like a bloody fucking souvenir!

AMin Get up, get out, get up, get out, THREE, FOUR!” [get louder]

EMaj “Get up, get out, fuck up, get back inside!

DMaj Get up, get out, fuck up, I said get back inside!

CMaj What the fuck is an unpaid intern!? (I guess I’ll…)

AMin Hide in bed and try again next winter!”

EMaj “Get up, get out, fuck up, get back inside!

DMaj Get up, get out, fuck up, I said get back inside!

CMaj I don’t fucking wanna be an unpaid intern! (I said I…)

AMin I DON’T FUCKING WANNA BE AN UNPAID INTERN!” [unison]

As Maria hits the last line, I slide my finger up a fret farther than usual, hitting B. Chunseong does the same, adjusting from the usual A minor to a B major. The moment he does, the vibe of the last words shifts from raw anger to a declaration of action.

An infiltration, a grand deception! whispers a face in the reflection of the bass drum. It’s Lord Gophe—the imaginary one that haunts me—but now he’s got a second head popping out of his neck… Sahana’s head. Her kohl-marked eyes are open wide, staring at me. Don’t go where I can’t follow, she teases, grinning wildly. That’s new, my waking nightmares quoting Lord of the Rings, but I understand the sentiment my sub-conscious is trying to communicate.

As the song ends, I look back up at Chunseong. “Can we… I dunno… not mix my responsibilities with my safe spaces?”

He chuckles, trying his best to diffuse. “I—sorry, Kabir. I wasn’t trying to target you—”

“Or maybe he was,” Maria says. “Maybe we all are.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means ‘get off your ass,’ Kabir! It means I’ll kick you in the nuts if you try and duck away from post-grad with this ‘safe space’ bullshit!”

“Safe spaces are a legitimate—”

“You’re gonna explain ‘safe spaces’ to me? Really? I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, dick!”

“Okay, alright,” Darcy says, playing Mother Mediator with her hands raised. “Maria, he’s being dumb, but he means well. I know you know that.” Then she turns to me, and I feel Sahana’s stare darken. “Kabir, we’re just… worried. And we’re trying to help! I guess, for Chunseong, that means changing a—a fucking chord to subtly inspire you. Nice job, by the way.”

“Sorry!” Chunseong says. “I didn’t think he’d pick up on it! Kind of impressive, actually. Shows how smart he is—”

“Nuh uh, no, no, what the fuck!?” I yell before he coddles me to death. “I’m not a fucking kid. You don’t have to vouch for me while I’m right here or find some silver lining in my accidental competence. I get it, I’m a piece of shit! And I’m gonna keep being a piece of shit for ten more minutes while I ask for us to just finish practice so I don’t have to think about my job prospects or my dad or fucking Sahana, who won’t stop staring at me from your goddamn bass drum, Darcy!”

The last words tumble out, and no one dares talk back. I can see it in their faces… fear of my apparent hyper-sensitivity. It’s a shit feeling, one that makes my face go numb.

“You,” Darcy eventually says, “…see Sahana in the drum?”

Huh. “Yeah?”

“Is she still there?” Chunseong asks.

I look down at the drum. The clear skin is covered in inky black fingerprints. Inside, the Gophe/Sahana Abomination is crawling like a spider, leaving black where it touches.

“Still there,” I say under my breath. “It’s my sleep paralysis demon, guys. I don’t know why I even brought it up.”

“That’s not how that works,” Maria says. “Like, at all. You’re not half-asleep or paralyzed right now. You’re also coming off a weed high, so you shouldn’t be hallucinating. Have you told anyone about this?”

I look at Maria, then back at the Abomination. It’s not crawling anymore. Now it’s just… looking at me. “No?” I eke out, backing away from the drum. “Should I have? Fuck! Am I schizophrenic!?”

“Woah,” Darcy says. “Let’s not throw big words around before we talk to someone who actually knows their shit.”

Images of therapy (prison for the weak-minded in an Indian family) flash through my head. It starts with the well-meaning circle-spectacled mustache man asking ‘the tough questions’ while I sit on a leather recliner. Then the recliner flattens, and the leather wraps around my ankles and wrists. The spectacles are goggles and the mustache is a face mask. Is that a scalpel!? No… no, I’m alright, thanks. I’m… oh man. I’m out of breath… why am I out of breath?

It’s looking at me, still. And the face… it’s changed now. The separate heads are gone, replaced by some fucked up hybrid of the two that also looks nothing like them. And it’s furious. Furious at me. Like it wants to tear me apart.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I’m pretty sure I mean it this time. Because I did suck… sometimes. I didn’t respond (usually had a good reason), I cancelled on her all the time (again, usually had a good reason), I was quick to argue and quicker to gaslight (not like I had the best household to learn diplomacy). Yeah, I was pretty shitty.

“I was shitty, okay!” I yell, backing up further until I hit the wall. “I get it! Now leave me the fuck alone!” Without thinking, my hand reaches next to me, finds a broom leaning against the wall, and hurls it towards the drum.

Then shit gets weird.

Before the broom reaches the drum, the Abomination thrusts a hand through the skin and catches it in midair. Immediately, the other three jump back, tripping over various instruments and wires until they’re all sprawled on the ground.

“I see it!” Darcy yells, reaching for her drumsticks. “I fucking see it, I—what the fuck is that!?”

On the opposite side of the garage, Chunseong and Maria scramble for the same music stand.

“Hands off!” Maria shouts, a command Chunseong instinctively follows after months of doormat training.

Then there’s me, the band’s over-appreciated bass player, getting watery in the eyes as I try to make sense of what’s happening. It’s not working. 

“I can touch you now,” the Abomination says as it enters a strange bipedal walk. The closer it gets, the more I attempt to sink into the very sturdy, non-flexible wall behind me.

The head, now singular, wears Sahana’s piercing brown eyes and Lord Gophe’s pudgy nose and lips. The top of its head is similar to the rest of its body, completely covered in inky pus. All that sticks out, aside from the face, are the eight limbs, four of which have now joined together in pairs to form two legs. The limbs are also covered in pus and these fragments of… what is that… steel? Steel rods, sticking out like some sort of exoskeletal structure. Steel rods covered in glowing red runes.

I look for a way to slip to the side, but I’m pressed so far into this damned wall that there’s too much friction to move. “Toss me something!” I scream.

“Anything?” Maria shouts back.

“Preferably something useful!”

“Okay… fuck, shit, fuck,” she mutters, in a way that reminds me she has a fucking anxiety disorder.

“Maria, I’m sorry about the ‘safe space’ thing!” I blurt out. “I didn’t mean it and you’re a good friend for calling me out! I suck and I’m really fucking sorry!”

A plastic object hits my hand, which I take to mean: ‘That’s okay, now go fuck this thing up.’

I swing the object into the side of the Abomination’s torso. Its face makes no indication of pain, but it lurches far enough to the side that I’m able to slip away. Looking down, I see that Maria’s thrown me—hmm—a DVD copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She’s crouched next to the movie cabinet while holding the music stand in her free hand. Then she meets my eyes and feels eternal judgment.

“What!?” she groans. “It said, ‘I can touch you now,’ and I hyper-fixated on the Voldemort quote! You know I hyper-fixate! …Fuck you!”

The Abomination’s already recovered in the far corner and is starting to swell in size as it produces more pus. I back away, joining the others in the opposite corner by the garage door.

“This is real, right?” I grab Chunseong’s muscley arm for comfort. “Did I pass out in the shower? Is this a dream?”

“It’s fucking real!” Darcy yells as she tries and fails to lift the garage door manually.

“But it’s quoting my comfort movies! Doesn’t that mean this is all in my head?” I grip Chunseong tighter. I thought he’d been awfully quiet this whole time, but now I can hear him muttering a constant stream of words under his breath:

“Haneul-e gyesin uli abeoji, ag-eseo guhasoseo, haneul-e gyesin uli abeoji, ag-eseo guhasoseo, haneul-e gyesin uli abeoji, ag-eseo guhasoseo…”

I understand enough of the words to know he’s praying. I also realize there’s enough I don’t know to safely say this can’t be in my head…

“Fine, fine, it’s real!” I say. “Now what do we do about it?”

Maria shoves Chunseong, breaking the loop on his prayer cassette. “You’re the president of the Whitaker Taekwondo Club, aren’t you? Fight the damn thing!”

He shoots back a look of such confusion, you’d think he’d never even heard of Taekwondo before.

“All we do is teach hyeong patterns! It’s a bunch of kicky-punchy dances, not the MMA!”

“But we saw you in competition,” Darcy replies. “You kicked ass!”

“Back when I was twice the size of anyone else!” He gestures toward his slimmer body. “And anyway, TKD only works when everyone’s following the same rules! If just one person fights dirty, the whole thing falls apart!”

“Then fuck competition rules,” I reply, arming him with my pus-covered copy of The Goblet of Fire. “You think Harry Potter used regulation Quidditch rules when he fought that dragon? Fuck no! He used what he knew about flying on a broomstick and applied it to the situation! Now use your hyeongs and fuck this thing up!”

At first, his face stays completely still. Then a few seconds pass, and I start to see a light shine in his eyes; somehow, something within that gibberish of an improvised hype-speech seems to make sense to him. He hands the DVD off to Maria, then shifts his stance into a low guard, planting his feet firmly into the oriental carpet covering the floor. “This is what powering through looks like, Kabir.” His eyes find the Abomination’s… Sahana’s eyes, and with a surge of adrenaline, he launches forward.

The onslaught starts with a swift front kick, his leg slicing through the air. The attack lands, and again the Abomination stumbles without any indication of real damage.

Chunseong transitions into a spinning hook kick, twisting his body with the expected grace of a Whitaker club president. His heel arcs high, targeting the head, and again, it lands. With a crunch, the eye gives way and sinks into the creature’s skull, bleeding out more pus. Instinctively, I look away… and catch Maria recording the whole thing on her phone.

“Seriously?”

“It’s great footage, Kabir! I could totally add this to my horror short for Premiere next month—”

“What the fuck happened to your GAD!?”

Maria and Darcy shoot me a dirty look. “GAD is not a monolith, Kabir! Anxiety manifests in different ways, and right now I’m anxious about the state of my senior project! Serious people come to the Premiere Film Festival, okay? I gotta… oh fuck!”

Maria ducks her head towards the floor. A split second later, the broom is occupying where she’d just been, half-sunken into the garage door. In the short time I’d been arguing with her, the Abomination had managed to catch Chunseong’s arms with two of its own, stopping him from attacking further. Now he’s looking at me, and I can tell he’s in pain. The skin of his arms that is visible has reddened, like he’s having an allergic reaction to the pus.

My fingers start to twitch, Chunseong’s last words replaying in my head as Sahana’s eyes continue to bore a hole in my skull. Powering through, huh? But I avoid responsibility like the plague, right, Dad? I act out of spite more than I act out of any sense of kindness or duty. Could this time be any different? I’ll probably lie and say yes if anyone asks, even if all I really want is to prove that I can power through too.

I reach down and pull the broom from the garage door, narrowing my eyes.

“Stand, Maria.”

“I’m gonna stay right here, thanks—”

“The music stand, dipshit.”

“Oh, right,” she says, handing it to me. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

“I think you mean Wildcat,” I reply, a fitting time to display any amount of Whitaker school spirit. And then I run, just like the boys in white and blue on our shitty basketball team… if they played basketball with brooms and music stands.

As I cross the garage, two drumsticks fly past my head. The Abomination uses its last two free hands to catch them, leaving its torso open. I hurl the broomstick towards its navel. One of its four leg-hands catches it, but it sacrifices its balance in the process. Using that lapse, I tense my arms and swing the music stand straight into its neck.

Sahana’s eyes, once filled with anger, shudder into vacancy. The edges of Gophe’s mouth sag, the muscles holding them up deactivated. After a moment, the free-standing corpse collapses into a puddle of pus and rune-covered bars. It’s dead… maybe.

Everything’s a bit fuzzy. Chunseong’s arms are fucked, covered in blisters, but he’s still got them. I can hear the other two behind me, breathing softly as they wait for some third-act resurrection bullshit I’m hoping doesn’t come. Except that statement isn’t true… not entirely.

There’s pus on my sneakers and residual dread in my bones, but I’m not thinking about any of that right now. I’m not thinking of Sahana either, even if part of me knows I should be. Maybe it’s some fucked up pride, the realization that I got to be the hero instead of someone else. Knowing me, there’s probably a little bit of that in there, but it’s not what I’m feeling. Because this isn’t pride, it’s relief. And not the relief that comes with the passing of danger.

As the post-battle calm settles in, I remember the anxieties I usually grab onto. The LinkedIn posts by old classmates, detailing how excited they are to join some bullshit company as an intern. My checking account, a stream of withdrawals and no deposits. The talking heads on the other end of a video call, asking if I’ve scored a summer job. And yet… this- this puddle says none of it matters. This puddle says “fuck your 27 connections on LinkedIn… fuck the money you don’t have… fuck your stupid fucking dad. Magic is real, and nothing else matters.”